Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“Please don’t hurt me!” Nate cries. “Just let me go. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I wanted to call the policejust ask her. I won’t tell anybody.”
“What do you think?”
I shrug. “He’s not lying, but he’s seen me. He knows my name.” I pass him the knife. “I don’t want to do it, though. Make it quick.”
“You’re smarter than your boyfriends.”
Nate tries to run, but Bone Saw catches him in two strides, snapping his neck in seconds and leaving him a lifeless heap on the ground.
I’m in a dark alley with four dead bodies. On instinct, I begin making excuses in my head. They hurt people, and they were going to kill a girl. They were going to hurt me. But the truth is I’m not sure I care about being a bad person anymore. And they pissed me off.
“How do you feel?” Bone Saw asks.
“I don’t really feel anything.”
“What about here?” He reaches between my legs, cupping my pussy through my shorts and rubbing me with his palm. “Do you feel anything here?”
I close my eyes and suck in a breath. “Yes.”
I jump back when I hear tires in the alley, flattening my body against the wall. A black delivery truck with its headlights off rolls to a stop in front of us, and when the back opens, three gold-masked men in all black climb out, dragging a barrel down the ramp.
I wrap my hand around Bone Saw’s bicep, stepping slightly behind him.
And then I watch as they lift Jason first and lower him into the barrel. Its contents make a hissing sound and steam billows from the top before they replace the lid, pull it back onto the truck, and grab another.
It’s acid. They’re dissolving them.
“I should check on the girl inside,” I say softly before returning to the warehouse through the receiving door.
My shoes stick to the floor and slide beneath me as I slowly cross the room to the girl who’s still face down on the floor in this mess.
I turn her over but the way she moves
It’s like rolling Layla in that sheet, and I know she’s dead. What I thought was a dark-colored shirt is actually her exposed torso, battered and stained black and blue from bruising and internal bleeding. Still, I bring two fingers to her neck and search for a pulse.
I’d be surprised if she were older than sixteen or seventeen. Leather cuffs and bracelets line her wrists, badly covering the thin, light self-harm scars. I wonder if she needed this as badly as I dida place to belong, a community.
A family.
“She’s dead,” I say, hearing his footsteps behind me. “Are they going to put her in a barrel, too?”
He stands with his gloved hands in his pockets. “Nah, we’ll leave her here. Make sure someone finds her.”
“How?”
“We’re everywhere, Teagan. Always have been.”
“River thinks you’re going to kill us.”
“I’m okay with that. Maybe we will.”
“You’re annoying,” I tell him. “I’m going home.”
He scoffs. “No, you’re not.”
“I have a curfew.”
“You’re a serial killer. Grow up. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter if you don’t have a choice? I’m still the bigger, scarier thing.”
Bone Saw doesn’t wait for me to answer, turning and stalking off toward the back of the warehouse and out the loading door.
I could go out the front and run to the car. I don’t have to follow him.
Of course, old habits die hardor, in my case, they don’t die at all. I slip and slide back toward the alley, where Bone Saw waits with his arms crossed in front of him. The other men are still there, working another barrel back up the ramp.
“Leave your clothes and shoes here,” he says. “They’ll take care of it.”
“What? But”
“You’re not getting in my car like this. Strip down to your underwear and let’s go. Besides, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before beneath me, shaking while I fucked your pussy until you blacked out.”
“I like these shoes.”
“You have four pairs.”
I grit my teeth and pull my shirt over my head.
Folding my arms over my chest, I follow him around the corner to a black Aston Martin. When I open the passenger side door, there’s a yellow t-shirt draped over the seat.
Everything is bigger in Texas!
“You’re fucked up for this,” I say, pulling it on. He shakes with laughter as he speeds down the alleyway, whipping around the corner and nearly throwing me into the backseat when he pulls onto the main road.
“Fuck!” I shout, searching for my seatbelt. “And you’re laughing! Stop fucking laughing.”
He pulls onto the 805 and speeds away from the city. Now, at almost two in the morning, he drives with the headlights off down the mostly open road. Every now and then, I look out the window and spot a few stray fireworks erupting in the sky.
Happy birthday, Luca. I love you, I think, leaning my head against the window.
“Was there a concert?” I ask.
“No. I can’t believe you fell for that shit. It was stupid.”
“I know,” I say, picking at the broken skin on the palm of my hand. It hadn’t hurt so much when I did it, but it hurts now, and it’s still bleeding a lot. “I used to fall for stuff like that all the timeconspiracy theories. I was just hopeful. Is that so bad?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
He scoffs. “I’m not telling you my fucking name.”
“It’s something stupid, isn’t it?”
“It’s probably not as cool as Bone Saw.”
“How old are you?”
“Would you shut the fuck up?” he says. “Stop asking me questions you know I’m not going to answer. Just sit there.”
“Fine. But you’re not like super old, right?”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.